The winners of the #OpenDataApps Challenge were felicitated here today by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY). Cash prizes worth Rs. 1 lakh each to three of the winners and Rs. 50,000 to each of the runners up of the Challenge.

The #OpenDataApps Challenge was one of the initiatives of NIC to create awareness on the potential of Open Data and drive the data-fuelled innovation. The Challenge, which was organised in association with NASSCOM, aimed at bringing together various stakeholders i.e. senior leaders & data controllers from various ministries & departments, Entrepreneurs & Innovators from start-up and developers community, IT Industry & Private Sector, Academia and Civil Society to build an ecosystem around Open Government Data.

Minister of Communications & Information Technology, Shri KapilSibal, had launched the Challenge on 8 August 2013. The entrepreneurs, developers from industry and community were invited to create unique and useful Apps across platforms and devices ranging from Mobile/Tablet, text-based SMS to voice-based applications using Open Government Data. A total of 99 applications pertaining to various sectors i.e. Agriculture, Postal, Governance, Health, etc were submitted from across the country for the Challenge.

Detailed information on the #OpenDataApps Challenge is available at http://data.gov.in/appschallenge.

NIC today also launched ‘Open Government Data Platform India v.2.0‘. This version of OGD Platform provides better experience to both Data Providers and Platform Users with unified interface. Some of the key highlights of the new platform are responsive web layout design, better discoverability of resources, enhanced visualization platform, option to enable SMS and Email Alerts, etc.